Resolve to be a happier, truer you
It’s 2018! There is so much promise and excitement with the advent of the new year. A chance to do things better, to achieve some goals and to just generally get closer to that perfect life we are chasing.
It is such a tired old story that is played out year after year. We resolve to lose weight after a month long of overeating. We join the gym, we throw out the last of the Christmas shortbread in a frenzy of good intentions and high hopes. By mid-February our gym bag is languishing in a corner somewhere and we have bought new cookies to replace the old. Let's do something different this year! While contemplating this new year’s column I gained inspiration from a modern era genius: Tim Ferriss.
At the age of 40, he has already written four books that have made the New York Times Bestseller list: The Four Hour Workweek, The Four Hour Body, the Four Hour Chef and Tools of Titans.
He is a self-professed human guinea pig and was one of Fortune’s Top 40 under 40. He advises companies such as Uber, Facebook and the bestselling language app Duolingo, (which this writer is currently using to learn Spanish).
I love to learn from highly successful people and follow Tim Ferriss on a daily basis. His thoughts on new year’s resolutions really resonated with me. He no longer makes resolutions, although he did so for years.
He now has two main approaches to planning for the new year.
The first is that he gets together with close friends to give each other resolutions, including deadlines. He has found this to be really successful.
This could be as simple as sitting down with your partner or a close friend who really knows you (and “gets” you) and drawing up a few goals with timelines attached.
The other thing he has found most useful is conducting a past-year review, rather than blindly setting resolutions for the new year. What you do is grab a notepad and pen and draw two columns, one with the heading positive and one with the heading negative.
Then flick through your past year’s dayplanner and note all the events you went to and people you saw and the activities you did that give you a positive feeling and all of those that give you a negative feeling. Even if you don’t have a dayplanner, I am sure you can remember some good and bad times.
An example I mentioned in the Boxing Day column is unpleasant gatherings over Christmas which you attended due to obligation rather than pleasure. Conversely, you might happily remember a hike you went on with friends, or a crafting night that was most enjoyable.
Now look at your columns and think about all the happy times and immediately schedule more of these for the next month. Call your outdoorsy friends and see if they want to go snowshoeing this weekend. Buy tickets to that concert you would like to see or invite good friends over for a potluck dinner and cards evening.
The second thing is to take all the things and people that give you negative feelings and put them on your not-to-do list. Stop saying yes to things out of obligation, FOMO (fear of missing out), guilt or any other silly reason.
Give it a go and let me know in a few months how it is working out. Hopefully you will be enjoying a happier more relaxed, truer version of the real you.
Dr. Wendy Ross is the lead physician at the Penticton cancer clinic and The Herald’s health columnist. Email: xdrwendyross@gmail.com, and on the Web: drwendyross.com.